From the article: "How does one start an aikido studio? In most cases you have to have a lot of years of training underneath you. Typically you have third-, fourth- or fifth-degree black belt rank and you are known to be a very good aikido practitioner. I didn't have any of those, I simply had a lot of love for aikido. At that time I had no teacher, no affiliation and really no rank other than a couple of years training. So I took a big chance buying the building to run a martial arts studio. Up to that point I had about three years training in aikido."